HDTV Almanac

In a press release, The Diffusion Group (TDG) announced its new report, “The Possibilities and Challenges for Mobile TV”. In the release, TDG states that mobile TV subscription services are forecast to double their subscriber base by 2013. This sounds exciting until you find out that this means increasing from 1.6 million this year to 3.3 million subscribers in 2013. That number pales in comparison to other services; for example, Comcast is estimated to have 23.5 million cable TV subscribers.

The press release indicates that demand for the service is lower than originally expected, partly because it is an additional fee on top of other subscription services. Also, few mobile phones are equipped to receive the over-the-air Mobile TV signals.

I agree that the cost may be part of the problem, but the real barrier to growth for these offerings is that users have good alternatives already. Most of the people who would be willing to pay for a mobile TV service already have smart phones with data plans. And this allows them to access streaming content from the Internet at no additional fee beyond their existing data plan. (And if they’re paying for the data plan, they may as well use it.)

TDG suggests that the solution may be to bundle Mobile TV service in with other subscription TV services such as cable or satellite. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Cable and satellite are already struggling to stop the bleeding of lost customers, and are working feverishly to make their own content available to subscribers over the Internet, through TV Everywhere initiatives.

Mobile TV is a cool idea that would have been a lot cooler 15 years ago. Unfortunately, in today’s crowded market of free, pay-as-you-go, and subscribtion services on the Internet, there really is not room — or need – for another entertainment distribution system.

I long for the old days, when things were simpler. Back when a computer monitor was a computer monitor, and a TV was a TV. It’s not that way anymore. Almost all TVs now have a way that lets you connect it to a laptop or desktop computer: either a VGA connector, or an HDMI connector that can hook up to a DVI port. But we still have computer monitors that don’t have TV tuners, so you can’t watch television programming on them (unless you stream it over the Internet or something like that).

Well, not so fast. Samsung has announced their 30 series of “computer monitors” that are available now, and a new 90 series of monitors that will ship in September. The 24″ FX2490HD has an LED backlight, 1080p resolution, two HDMI connectors in addition to VGA and component video connectors, and a USB port that lets you play content stored on a thumb drive. And it includes tuners and a coax connection for cable or over-the-air signals. It even can do picture-in-picture.

Hey, I don’t know about you, but this waddles and quacks like a familiar waterfowl. I really don’t get why it’s not an HDTV. I do get that it’s a compact display, and if I were sending a kid off to college, this would be just the sort of space-saving convenience that I’d want to send along. But why this would do the job better than some other 24″ display that is called an HDTV escapes me at this point.

Last spring, I wrote about Netflix demo’ing its streaming service on a Windows Phone 7 operating system. Now comes word that Netflix is releasing free applications for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch that will let subscribers access streaming content on these portable devices.

The free apps can access the streaming service across either a WiFi or 3G data connection. You can even stop in the middle of a movie or TV episode, and then when you come back, it will pick up right where you left off. This works even if you restart on another device, such as your home computer. You can download the free apps from the Apple iTunes store.

This announcement is particularly interesting in the light of recent news reports that Apple is negotiating to rent TV episodes for $.99 each. The all-you-can-eat Netflix service is available to any subscriber with an $8.99 monthly subscription or higher, so the break-even point is just 10 shows a month, no matter whether you watch on your phone, media player, computer, notebook, video game console, or Internet-connected TV or Blu-ray player. Netflix is expanding its footprint across the entertainment landscape, and Apple’s pay-as-you-go model may be a difficult sell.

I know I’m not the only one who gets peeved about this; you’re watching a show, then a commercial comes on and blasts you out of your seat with a high volume setting. It’s not just broadcast video; I’ve also noticed this (with dismay) on streaming sites such as Hulu. I’ve written about this problem before, including a mention of a product from SRS Labs that uses the company’s technology that is also built into many current HDTV models.

Now comes the announcement of another device, this time from Gefen.

The box can accept and output either analog stereo or digital (TOSLINK or S/PDIF) audio signals. It relies on Dolby Volume leveling technology, which can also enhance the low and high range levels in order to create a more natural-sounding experience, no matter how loud or quiet you have the volume set. And it has a simple bypass button on the front so that you can turn off the effect if you want. The Gefen product is a little pricey at $179 direct, but it has sophisticated modeling technology inside that may well outperform the feature that is built into your TV set (if it has volume leveling).

Did you ever notice that with technology, it often seems to be two steps forward but one step back? Before digital TV, our analog tuners could change channels at the speed of a thumb-press. (This was even true in the early days of the remote controls. My grandmother had a Zenith Space Command, and when my uncle’s black lab came in the room and shook its dog tags, the jangling sound would cause the channels to change wildly!) Now we’ve advanced to HDTV and lots of fancy features, but not everything is an improvement.

For example, what happens when you want to channel surf and you press the Channel Up button? Probably nothing, at least for about a second. I sometimes will press the button three or four times in rapid succession, in hopes that I’ve got the count right to get to the desired channel. It’s a small price to pay for the other benefits, but it’s still annoying.

That’s why Broadcom has developed “FastRTV“, which provides nearly instantaneous channel switching for cable system set-top boxes and other devices. And the great thing about it is that the cable company doesn’t have to do anything different to the digital signal that it is already sending out. The company claims that the switching speed is up to five times faster, but judge for yourself; scroll down on this page to find a video demonstration of the technology.

Now, Broadcom is a company that makes chips that go into the set-top boxes and other devices that the cable companies buy for their customers, so you can’t just go on Amazon and buy a FastRTV device for your system. But it might not hurt to ask your cable company if they offer boxes with this feature. Comcast apparently is deploying boxes with the FastRTV feature, and others are likely to follow suit.

So it may take a little time, but eventually technology takes another two steps forward to put you ahead of where you were. And one more little annoyance is eliminated.

Rather than spend it at Bernie’s, how about spending the weekend of September 10 through 12 at your local electronics store? The Consumer Electronics Association (hosts of the mammoth CES show in Las Vegas every January) and ESPN are joining forces to create “National 3D Demo Days“. ESPN will provide continuous 3D programming for those three days from 10 AM to 11 PM Eastern.

The content will include live college football, recorded coverage from this summer’s FIFA World Cup soccer tournament (the other “football”), and footage of the Harlem Globetrotters, and highlights from X Games 16. The CEA has posted a list of participating retailers here: http://www.digitaltips.org/video/retailer-locator.asp.

The fact remains that we don’t yet have that much 3D content available, but this is a good effort to help consumers learn more about the technology and find out what they need to get so that they can take advantage of the 3D coverage at home. I also suspect that this is part of a concerted effort to get subscription television services including cable and telco to allocate resources to the distribution of 3D content and channels as they become available.

We’ve got a chicken and egg problem here, and it looks as though both sides are working together to bootstrap the process. I still think that unless you’re an early adopter, you’re best off waiting until late 2012. By that point, 3D capability should not add much of a premium – if any — to the cost of a new television, and the supply of 3D content should be much greater by then. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go join the fun the second weekend in September.

Cox has apparently decided to join ‘em. In a recent story in the L.A. Times, Cox will put their video-on-demand (VOD) service into standard TiVo personal video recorders (PVRs), eliminating the need for a separate set-top box. The TiVo box also gives access to online services such as Netflix streaming video and Rhapsody music.

This is significant because it shows that a cable company is willing to let go of control of the set-top box, presumably in a move to help retain existing customers and perhaps attract new ones with this convenient feature. Cox is not the largest cable company, but with 6 million subscribers in 18 states, it’s in a position to be a trendsetter for other cable companies. And the deal helps extend TiVo’s reach at a time when it is increasingly difficult to get consumers to pay an extra monthly fee on top of their cable bill.

It’s time to play a little Jeopardy. The answer is “Serbia and Macedonia“. Can you come up with the question? Give up? Here you go: “What two countries rank higher than the United States in terms of average daily time spent viewing television?” Clearly we can do better, folks! You’re just not trying hard enough.

Nielsen is out with a new report: How People Watch. It reports on how people around the world use television and other electronic devices to watch television programming. Now, it’s important to note that the survey was given to 27,000 consumers from 55 different countries. And a key factor is that they were all online users. This makes me suspect that you may not be able to generalize the answers across the entire world population. With that caveat in mind, the results are still interesting.

For example, the fact cited at the start of this piece has the average American consumer watching 5:04 (hours:minutes) of TV each day. Macedonia topped us with 5:18, and Serbia blew us away at 5:39, more than an additional half hour every day. I don’t have an explanation for this, but I will point out that the CIA World Fact Book reports that the Serbian unemployment rate is 16.6% compared with the U.S. 9.3%. And Macedonia unemployment is at 32.2%. Maybe these people just have more time that they can give to television? Oh, and we just edged out Greece for the number 3 spot; they averaged one minute less than us at 5:03 (and an almost-identical unemployment rate).

We went for the Bronze in another category as well. In High-Definition Television Ownership, we tied the United Kingdom for third place with an index score of 157. Hong Kong topped us for second place with an index score of 160, but the Australians finished far out in first with an index of 200. (Fair dinkum? Some might say that the Aussies use a different ruler to measure with; they count 576p as high-def, while the rest of the world seems to agree that 720p marks the minimum spec for HD.)

And you don’t even want to know where we finished on items such as mobile TV or watching over-the-top Internet content on a television set. Cubs fans would be familiar with our position in the pack.

Bottom line: it appears that we’re slacking off here. So let’s plan on a big push this holiday season to get hooked up, tuned in, and zoned out. Let’s see some better numbers if Nielsen decides to update this study next year!

ESPN 3D has announced that it will broadcast about 13 NCAA Division 1 football games this year. The network also has named the first three contests:

- Monday, September 6, 8 PM Eastern: Boise State vs. Virginia Tech
- Saturday, September 11, 3:40 PM Eastern: Ohio State vs. Miami
- Saturday, September 18, 7 PM Eastern: Clemson vs. Auburn

The network also will show the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game on Monday, January 10 at 8:30 PM Eastern. ESPN 3D also plans to broadcast additional live sports programming this year, including the NBA, college basketball, and Winter X Games 15. The network is still developing the skills needed for live 3D broadcasting, which requires different camera angles than standard 2D coverage in order to be most effective. The college football broadcasts are sponsored by Sony, and ESPN 3D will be using Sony equipment to produce their live coverage.

13 football games are probably not enough to warrant getting a new 3DTV for most people, but it may be the nudge that some early adopters will need to push them into making a move. Adding 3D coverage to an event that is already being produced in 2D increases the costs significantly – especially since it appears that you can’t use the same camera angles for both — so it will be a while before more networks will be able to provide a lot of live 3D programming. Still, ESPN is getting out in front and doing the experimenting and learning that will be necessary when 3D becomes commonplace, if not the standard mode.

In case you haven’t been following the story, Comcast wants NBC like a six year old girl wants a real live pony of her very own. Unfortunately, Comcast can’t just walk down to the paddock and plunk down billions of dollars and walk away with a major network. It seems that its competitors, Federal agencies such as the FCC, and Congress all have some strong opinions about the deal, and it’s not clear that it will win final approval.

That’s what makes yesterday’s agreement with CBS so significant. Comcast inked a 10-year deal that gives CBS a lot of money, and means that Comcast won’t have to worry about negotiating new deals all the time with CBS. We’ve seen the dust-ups over fees between networks and cable companies, and that situation is only likely to get worse.

But this also signals that Comcast can still play nice with other networks, even if it ends up owning NBC. This could have a positive impact on the FCC and legislators who could stand in the way of the NBC deal. Even so, it’s still too early for Comcast to break out the bubbly.